by Robyn Bolton | Apr 2, 2024 | Innovation, Leadership, Strategy
You’ve heard the adage that “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Well, AI is the fruit bowl on the side of your Denny’s Grand Slam Strategy, and culture is eating that, too.
1 tool + 2 companies = 2 strategies
On an Innovation Leader call about AI, two people from two different companies shared stories about what happened when an AI notetaking tool unexpectedly joined a call and started taking notes. In both stories, everyone on the calls was surprised, uncomfortable, and a little bit angry that even some of the conversation was recorded and transcribed (understandable because both calls were about highly sensitive topics).
The storyteller from Company A shared that the senior executive on the call was so irate that, after the call, he contacted people in Legal, IT, and Risk Management. By the end of the day, all AI tools were shut down, and an extensive “ask permission or face termination” policy was issued.
Company B’s story ended differently. Everyone on the call, including senior executives and government officials, was surprised, but instead of demanding that the tool be turned off, they asked why it was necessary. After a quick discussion about whether the tool was necessary, when it would be used, and how to ensure the accuracy of the transcript, everyone agreed to keep the note-taker running. After the call, the senior executive asked everyone using an AI note-taker on a call to ask attendees’ permission before turning it on.
Why such a difference between the approaches of two companies of relatively the same size, operating in the same industry, using the same type of tool in a similar situation?
1 tool + 2 CULTURES = 2 strategies
Neither storyteller dove into details or described their companies’ cultures, but from other comments and details, I’m comfortable saying that the culture at Company A is quite different from the one at Company B. It is this difference, more than anything else, that drove Company A’s draconian response compared to Company B’s more forgiving and guiding one.
This is both good and bad news for you as an innovation leader.
It’s good news because it means that you don’t have to pour hours, days, or even weeks of your life into finding, testing, and evaluating an ever-growing universe of AI tools to feel confident that you found the right one.
It’s bad news because even if you do develop the perfect AI strategy, it won’t matter if you’re in a culture that isn’t open to exploration, learning, and even a tiny amount of risk-taking.
Curious whether you’re facing more good news than bad news? Start here.
8 culture = 8+ strategies
In 2018, Boris Groysberg, a professor at Harvard Business School, and his colleagues published “The Leader’s Guide to Corporate Culture,” a meta-study of “more than 100 of the most commonly used social and behavior models [and] identified eight styles that distinguish a culture and can be measured. I’m a big fan of the model, having used it with clients and taught it to hundreds of executives, and I see it actively defining and driving companies’ AI strategies*.
Results (89% of companies): Achievement and winning
- AI strategy: Be first and be right. Experimentation is happening on an individual or team level in an effort to gain an advantage over competitors and peers.
Caring (63%): Relationships and mutual trust
- AI strategy: A slow, cautious, and collaborative approach to exploring and testing AI so as to avoid ruffling feathers
Order (15%): Respect, structure, and shared norms
- AI strategy: Given the “ask permission, not forgiveness” nature of the culture, AI exploration and strategy are centralized in a single function, and everyone waits on the verdict
Purpose (9%): Idealism and altruism
- AI strategy: Torn between the undeniable productivity benefits AI offers and the myriad ethical and sustainability issues involved, strategies are more about monitoring than acting.
Safety (8%): Planning, caution, and preparedness
- AI strategy: Like Order, this culture takes a centralized approach. Unlike Order, it hopes that if it closes its eyes, all of this will just go away.
Learning (7%): Exploration, expansiveness, creativity
- AI strategy: Slightly more deliberate and guided than Purpose cultures, this culture encourages thoughtful and intentional experimentation to inform its overall strategy
Authority (4%): Strength, decisiveness, and boldness
- AI strategy: If the AI strategies from Results and Order had a baby, it would be Authority’s AI strategy – centralized control with a single-minded mission to win quickly
Enjoyment (2%): Fun and excitement
- AI strategy: It’s a glorious free-for-all with everyone doing what they want. Strategies and guidelines will be set if and when needed.
What do you think?
Based on the story above, what culture best describes Company A? Company B?
What culture best describes your team or company? What about your AI strategy?
*Disclaimer. Culture is an “elusive lever” because it is based on assumptions, mindsets, social patterns, and unconscious actions. As a result, the eight cultures aren’t MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive), and multiple cultures often exist in a single team, function, and company. Bottom line, the eight cultures are a tool, not a law (and I glossed over a lot of stuff from the report)
by Robyn Bolton | Mar 11, 2024 | Innovation, Leadership
In 2014, rumors started to circulate that Apple was developing a self-driving autonomous car to compete with Tesla. At the end of February 2024, rumors circulated that Apple was shutting down “Project Titan,” its car program. According to multiple media outlets, the only logical conclusion from the project’s death is that this decision signals the beginning of the end of Apple.
As much as I enjoy hyperbole and unnecessary drama, the truth is far more mundane.
The decision was just another day in the life of an innovation.
As always, there is a silver lining to this car-shaped cloud: the lessons we can learn from Apple’s efforts.
Lesson 1: Innovation isn’t all rainbows and unicorns
People think innovation is fun. It is. It is also gut-wrenching, frustrating, and infuriating. Doing something new requires taking risks, which is uncomfortable for most people. Even more challenging is that, more often than not, when you take a risk, you “fail.” (if you learned something, you didn’t fail, but that’s another article).
What you can do: Focus on the good stuff – moments of discovery, adventures when experimenting, signs that you’re making life better for others – but don’t forget that you’re defying the odds.
Lesson 2: More does not mean success
It’s been reported that Apple spent over ten billion dollars on Project Titan and that over 2000 people were working on it before it was canceled. With a market cap of over two trillion dollars, a billion dollars a year isn’t even a rounding error. But it’s still an eye-popping number, which makes Apple’s decision to cut its losses downright courageous.
What you can do: Be on guard for the sunk-cost fallacy. It’s easy to believe that you’ll eventually succeed if you keep working and pouring resources into a project. That’s not true, as Apple experienced. And in the rare cases when it is, executives are often left wondering if the success was worth the cost.
Lesson 3: Pivot based on data, not opinions
At least four different executives led Project Titan during its decade in development, and each leader brought their own vision for what the Apple Car should be. First, it was an electric vehicle with driver assistance that would compete with Tesla. Next, it was a self-driving car to compete with Google’s WayMo. Then, plans for fully autonomous driving were canceled. Finally, the team returned to its original target of matching Tesla’s Level 2 automation.
Changes in project objectives, strategies, and execution plans are necessary for innovation, so there’s nothing obviously wrong with these pivots. But the fact that they tended to happen when a new leader was appointed (and that Jony Ive caused an 18-month hiring freeze simply by expressing “displeasure”) makes me question how data-based these pivots actually were
What you can do: Be willing to change but have a high standard for what is required to cause a change. Data, even qualitative and anecdotal data, should be seriously considered. The opinion of a single executive, not so much.
Lesson 4: Dream big, build small
Apple certainly dreamed big with its aspirations to build a fully semi-autonomous vehicle and it poured billions into developing and testing the sensors, batteries, and partnership required to make it a reality. But it was never all-or-nothing in its pursuit of the automotive industry. Apple introduced CarPlay the same year it kicked off Project Titan, and it continues to offer regular updates to the system. Car Key was announced in 2020 and is now offered by BMW, Genesis, Hyundai, and Kia.
What you can do: Take a portfolio approach towards your overall innovation portfolio (Apple kept working on the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Vision Pro) and within each project. It’s not unusual that a part of the project turns out to be more valuable than the whole project.
Lesson 5: ___________________________
Yes, that is a fill-in-the-blank because I want to hear from you. What lesson are you taking away from Project Titan’s demise, and how will it make you a better innovator?
by Robyn Bolton | Feb 13, 2024 | Innovation, Leadership
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and nowhere is that more true than in innovation.
That’s one of the insights I took away from InnoLead’s Q1 report on corporate innovation priorities. The report is an eye-opening look at the impact of AI on corporate innovation as experienced by corporate entrepreneurs themselves. But before deep diving into that topic, the report’s authors shared intriguing data about member companies’ innovation structure, leadership engagement, organizational connections, and results. Nestled amongst the charts were several that, when taken together, got my Spidey senses tingling.
61.0% of innovation teams are “directly under a high-visibility leader with a broad company focus.”
This is great because innovation needs senior leaders’ support and active engagement to survive, let alone survive for long enough to produce meaningful results. Add this to the fact that 45% of senior leadership teams frequently discuss the “progress and value of the innovation program,” and all signs point to innovation as a strategic priority.
But (you knew there was a but, didn’t you)…
If “broad company focus” means “no P&L responsibility,” we have a problem. In every for-profit company I’ve worked for and with, people with P&L responsibility have greater power, influence, and access to resources than people without a P&L. This division may not feel fair, but it makes sense – the people who bring in profit and revenue will always be more influential than people who represent “cost centers.”
You can see the impact of P&L owners who are, understandably, focused entirely on delivering short-term results throughout the report – 75% of companies have shifted their focus more towards near-term priorities, and 61% shifted their innovation portfolio away from Horizon 3 (also known as radical, breakthrough, or disruptive innovation).
As for all those discussions, it’d be great if they focused on walking the talk of innovation. But suppose it’s only innovation platitudes or, worse, questioning innovation’s ROI. That doesn’t bode well for the “high-visibility leader with broad company focus,” the innovation team, or the company’s culture.
71.2% of innovation teams’ customers or business partners are unaware of the team’s existence, don’t engage, or engage only occasionally.
Welcome to Innovation Island! Where the cool people work on cool things in cool offices while all you drones slave away doing the same thing you’ve always done and making the money that pays for the cool people to do cool things in their cool offices.
I’m sure this isn’t the message the innovation team intends to send, but it’s the one received by most organizations.
When arguing for Innovation Island, managers often point to the organizational antibodies likely to swarm and kill H3/radical/breakthrough innovation and even some H2/adjacent innovations. They’re right, and those innovations must be “protected.” But not every innovation needs protection. H2 and certainly H1 innovations, where most portfolios are now, should be shared with the core business because the core business will eventually run them.
The bigger problem, in my opinion, is that innovation teams don’t seem to be reaching out to others in the organization. Like the P&L owners they report to, people in the core business are busy running the business and generating revenue. Very few have the time or energy to seek out the innovation team to discuss and explore innovation. Companies that want to build a culture of innovation need to turn their innovators into evangelists, not residents of an island connected to the mainland by a single drawbridge.
23.4% of innovation teams are considered outsiders or actively undermined by other functions and business units.
This may not sound bad, but add to it the 55.0% that are “somewhat integrated with occasional collaboration” with other departments and business units, and you may be tempted to believe that Innovation Island would be wise to invest in a surface-to-air missile defense system.
Sadly, this perception of the innovation team as “The Others” isn’t surprising when considering that the most important tactic for building a relationship between innovation and the functions or business units is already having strong relationships and interpersonal trust (75.3% of respondents). The least effective (4.7% of respondents) is “writing down shared objectives and expectations.” So, no, the email you sent is not enough to win friends and influence people.
Bottom line
Well-intended companies appoint a senior executive to lead the innovation team because they’ve been told that doing so is powerful proof that innovation is a strategic priority. They hire outsiders to inject new thinking into the organization because they know that “what got you here won’t get you there.” They cordon the team and their work off from the rest of the organization because they read that separation is essential to preserving innovation’s disruptive nature.
But if the senior executive doesn’t have the organizational power and influence that comes with P&L ownership, the team doesn’t have strong personal relationships with others in the business, and other functions and business units don’t know the team exists or how to interact with it, innovation will go nowhere.
But that’s better than where it could go.
by Robyn Bolton | Jan 23, 2024 | Innovation, Just for Fun, Leadership, Stories & Examples
It’s award season, which means that, as a resident of Boston, I have the responsibility and privilege to talk about The Departed (pronounced: The Dep-ah-ted). The film won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2007 and earned Martin Scorsese his first, and to date only, Academy Award for Best Director. It is also chock-full of great lessons for corporate innovators.
Quick Synopsis
If you’ve seen The Departed, you can skip this part. If you haven’t, why not and read on.
The Departed is loosely based on notorious Boston crime boss Whitey Bulger and features three main characters:
- Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), a vicious and slightly unhinged Irish mob boss
- Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), a Massachusetts State Trooper in the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) formed to catch Costello, who, in his spare time, is a spy for Costello.
- Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), a police academy recruit who goes undercover to infiltrate Costello’s organization
But wait! There’s more. Alec Baldwin plays Colin’s SIU boss, George Ellerby. Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg (who received an Oscar nomination for this role) play Billy’s Mass State Police (MSP) bosses, Captain Queenan and Staff Sergeant Dignam, respectively. Completing the chaos is Vera Farmiga, who plays Madolyn Madden, Colin’s girlfriend and Billy’s court-ordered psychiatrist.
There’s a lot of other stuff going on, but that gives you enough context for the following quotes to hopefully make sense.
Listen to the words people use.
Colin (after Dignam refuses to hand over undercover files): I need those passwords.
Ellerby: No, you want those passwords
It’s not often that Ellerby says something useful, let alone wise, but he nails it with this one. Colin wants the passwords to Dignam’s files on undercover agents because it will make both Colin’s official job of finding Costello’s rat in the MSP and his unofficial job of finding the MSP officer in Costello’s crew easier. He doesn’t need the passwords, however, because, with enough time and effort, he can find the rats he’s looking for.
When we hear from customers that they want something, it’s tempting to run off and create it. But as Ellerby points out, wants and needs are different. Just because customers want something doesn’t mean they are willing to pay for or change their behavior to get and use it.
Figuring out what a customer needs is difficult because it requires them to trust you enough to admit they have a problem they can’t solve. It’s also difficult because most of us have access to solutions to our functional needs (think the bottom few layers of Maslow’s hierarchy). As a result, the needs consumers grapple with tend to be emotional and social, and it’s far more challenging to admit those to a stranger, especially in a focus group or product-focused interview.
How you feel impacts everyone around you
Madolyn (after a counseling session): Why is the last patient of the day always the hardest?
Billy: Because you’re tired, and you don’t give a sh*t. It’s not super-natural.
Billy and Madolyn get off to a rough start in their first counseling session, culminating in Billy asking for a prescription for Valium. Madolyn calls him out for “drug-seeking behavior” and throws two Valiums across the desk before Billy storms out. A few minutes later, Madolyn catches up with Billy, hands him a prescription for Valium, and asks the above question.
Being a corporate innovator can be difficult, sometimes soul-crushing work (ask the good people at Store 8). It can also be thrilling and inspiring. It can even be all those things in one day. That’s what makes it tiring, even when you give a sh*t.
Managing your energy and monitoring your behavior are leadership qualities we don’t discuss often enough. It’s okay to be exhausted after a day of facilitating ideation sessions or intense strategic meetings. It’s normal to be frustrated after a contentious conversation or demotivated when you get bad news. But leaders usually find a way to not take those emotions out on their teams. And, in the rare instance when they punish the team for someone else’s sin, they apologize and explain.
Your job is not your identity.
Billy: Look, I just want my identity back, all right? That’s all.
Colin: All right, I understand. You want to be a cop again.
Billy: No, no, being a cop’s not an identity. I want my identity back.
Towards the end of the film, Billy is tired of working undercover and reports to MSP headquarters to complete the paperwork required to expunge his criminal record and get his identity back. That’s when Colin makes the same mistake most of us make and confuses Billy’s job with his identity.
We spend so much time at work. We rely on our paychecks for so much. We even introduce ourselves to new people using our job titles. It’s easy for your job to feel like your identity, especially when your job aligns so closely with your deeply held beliefs and values. But your job is not your identity. You are still a Tempered Radical, even without your corporate title. You are still an optimistic problem-solver, even when it’s been months since your last brainstorming session.
You are an innovator, even if you don’t have a business card to prove it.
by Robyn Bolton | Dec 10, 2023 | Innovation, Leadership, Stories & Examples
In September 2006, I moved to Copenhagen, Denmark, on a temporary assignment with BCG. As one does when arriving somewhere for an extended period, I went to the grocery store to stock my kitchen.
Since the grocery store was on the ground floor of my building, I bought enough food for a few breakfasts and dinners, made note of the other offerings for future trips, and learned through painful public embarrassment that one must purchase grocery bags (and those bags are nowhere near the checkout lane).
The following day, yogurt was on the menu, and I grabbed the first of the three options I had bought the previous day – a small container of strawberry yogurt.
My heart sank when I peeled off the top.
Instead of super healthy, organic, natural (I’m in Scandinavia, for crying out loud!) yogurt, the stuff in my cup was a rather suspicious beige with dark brown flecks.
Stifling my instinct to dry heave, I chucked the cup into the garbage, along with the five other cups in the clearly spoiled pack, and pulled Brand #2 out of the refrigerator. Surely, this strawberry yogurt would be safe to eat.
But it, too, was beige. A lighter beiger and without the disturbing brown flecks. But still beige.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered. Admittedly, the grocery store was more of a glorified convenience store, but c’mon, how hard is it to keep track of Sell By dates?
Into the garbage, it went. Out of the refrigerator came Brand #3 (Yes, I take a portfolio approach to innovation AND food purchases)
Closing my eyes and saying a quick prayer to both the grocery and yogurt gods, I peeled open the yogurt. Not beige but a slight hint of pink, just enough to reassure me that it contained strawberries and hadn’t curdled but not so much that I suspected an American-amount of food coloring.
Later that day…
At lunch, my new colleagues asked how I was settling in. I regaled them with my “bumbling American experiencing culture shock in a country where she looks (and is initially treated like) a local” stories.
As we gathered up our dishes and returned to the kitchen, I commented that I was surprised that my local grocery would keep expired products on the shelf. When they echoed my surprise, I told them about the spoiled yogurt and that 2 of the three brands I purchased were bad.
Based on the glances they exchanged, I knew I had another story to add to an already uncomfortably full book.
It turns out that. The “good” yogurt I ate that morning was from the lowest quality brand, one that no self-respecting Dane would consider eating but that is sold to unsuspecting foreigners (Hi, that’s me). The “bad” yogurt was from respected all-natural brands. All yogurt, they explained, falls somewhere in the spectrum from white to beige or even tan. That’s why they print the flavor name and a picture of the fruit on the label.
How often do we make the same mistake?
How often do we reject something because it’s not what we expect to see? Because it’s not what we’re used to?
Maybe not often when it comes to yogurt, but what about other more important things, like:
- Trends
- Technologies
- Ideas
- Business Models
- Startups
- People
And what happens when we don’t have people willing to point out that we’re no longer in a place where our status quo applies?
by Robyn Bolton | Nov 28, 2023 | Innovation, Just for Fun, Leadership
“Yes, and….”
You know it. You love it. You may even use it.
The phrase is a core principle of improv that has become the “magic” brainstorming phrase. On stage, it encourages acceptance and collaboration, and in innovation, it quiets the critics (“No, because”), one-uppers (“No, but”), and passive-aggressive show-offs (“Yes, but”).
And there are other core Improv principles that will help you lead your team to innovation success.
You probably know them. You may or may not love them. And you definitely need to use them.
1. Be human
As Alla Weinberg pointed out in our conversation about Psychological Safety, “People are messy.” YOU are a person (I assume), meaning YOU are messy. And that’s ok because guess what? Your boss, team, and even that super annoying person in (fill in the function) are people, meaning they’re messy.
Improv embraces the mess. When someone says the wrong thing, something unexpected happens, or everything goes wrong, the actors don’t stand around, point fingers, and complain. They embrace the opportunity to step into the scene, support their fellow actor, and move things forward. Plus, a Coach Beard says, “Perfection sucks. Perfect is boring.”
2. Connect
Building genuine and authentic relationships is central to building Psychological Safety. It’s also central to great Improv. Consider this example:
If two performers come on stage and only talk about the muffins they are baking, it’s going to be a boring scene. The audience doesn’t care about the muffins! What they really want to know is how these characters feel, especially about each other. Is one character sad because her daughter is about to go off to college, and she will miss spending time with her? Or is the other character fearful because she will have to navigate adulthood without her mom nearby? If the scene doesn’t focus on the relationship, it isn’t going very far. In order to connect well in the scene, improvisers must be attuned to one another.
If all you do as a leader is talk about your calendar, your To-do list, and deadlines, people aren’t going to care about the work. They’ll do the work because that’s what you pay them to do. But they won’t care enough to problem-solve (they’ll ask you for the solution), suggest improvements (they’ll do what you ask), or develop new ideas (they’ll wait for your orders). As a leader, you need to connect to create. That applies to creating solutions, new businesses, and the next generation of leaders.
3. Actively Listen
Active listening isn’t just about nodding your head while someone else speaks. Active listening requires giving full attention to the speaker, letting go of judgment, and understanding their point of view. You don’t have to agree with what they’re saying, but you do have to understand and respond to it.
Actively listening, understanding, and responding are essential to Improv. When an actor does something completely unexpected, their fellow actors can’t ignore it because that will destroy the show. They respond to it and build on it. After all, you shouldn’t say “Yes and” if you don’t know what you’re saying yes to.
4. Pivot
Pivoting is hard. It’s hard to admit something isn’t working, and often harder to figure out what will work while you’re in the middle of doing the thing that doesn’t work. And that’s what Improv actors have to do all the time. You may not notice because it looks easy. But it only looks easy because they practice all the time.
Flexibility, adaptability, and the ability to change quickly are all skills that can be developed. But you must practice. Some people are naturally more comfortable making changes, but everyone can learn skills and tools to recognize when a change in direction is required and quickly sort through the options to find the next best option.
5. Have fun
Improv is hard work, and it’s fun. Innovation is hard work and (it should be) fun. We spend too much time at work and with our colleagues to not have fun, laugh, or enjoy ourselves. Work will never be all rainbows and unicorns, just like not every Improv sketch will be hilarious. But there must be moments of fun, laughter, and joy because you can’t create or innovate when you’re overwhelmed, downtrodden, or burned out.
As Jeff Ash, Director of Westside Improv, explains:
“Play unlocks the creative spirit that we all have. When people lose a creative spirit and get engulfed in whatever they’re doing in their day-to-day lives, I believe it impacts our ability to connect, build relationships, and be in community.”
What are other lessons we can learn from Improv?
